Beware
Greeks Bearing Gifts
Today marks the anniversary of the
traditional Fall of Troy in 1184 B.C., thereby bringing to its culmination the
Trojan War.
The Fall of Troy is not recounted in
Homer’s Iliad, the iconic epic, it rather covering only a period of ten days to
two weeks within the supposed ten-year span of the war. The Fall of Troy through the subterfuge of
the Trojan Horse is briefly mentioned in the Odyssey and is referenced in several
other Greek sources. The story would not
find, however, its full development until Virgil’s Aeneid.
Some modern historians have attempted to
explain the story as an analogy, suggesting actually that an earthquake –
Poseidon, whose portfolio included horses, was as well the god of earthquakes. I, for one, would rather retain the literal
interpretation.
Some might consider the Trojan War
to be ancient history. It’s all matter
of perspective. At the time of the Fall
of Troy the Egyptian civilization had been flourishing already for 2000 years.
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